AMD has agreed to acquire World Labs for $8.2 billion, bringing a young artificial intelligence research company and its founder, computer scientist Fei-Fei Li, into the chip maker’s business. The deal, announced on 28 September 2026, gives AMD a closer connection between the graphics processing units, or GPUs, it sells for AI computing and the development of AI models.
World Labs, founded in 2024, develops deep learning models intended to understand physical reality. AMD described the company as one of the leading developers in that field. The brief announcement did not set out details of the company’s technology or models.
Li will join AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, working directly with AMD’s chief executive, Lisa Su. World Labs co-founders Justin Johnson and Ben Mildenhall will continue to lead the World Labs team as it becomes part of AMD.
The companies already had a working relationship. They formed an inference optimisation and training partnership last year, and World Labs began a deeper technical partnership with AMD during the same period. That work started with model training and inference optimisation on AMD GPUs. Inference is the process of using a trained AI model to produce an output.
World Labs said AI development required “close collaboration across model research, systems and compute”. AMD and World Labs said they were committed to building an end-to-end open AI ecosystem covering hardware, software, platforms and widely accessible open models.
The acquisition is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. The companies have not disclosed in the announcement how the transaction could affect AMD’s existing AI partnerships, its finances or World Labs’ wider operations.
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